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Paul Thomas, a bestselling New Zealand crime writer, deserves to be better
known here. The hero of Death on Demand, Tito Ihaka, a Maori cop, is
fat, rude, insubordinate and difficult to get on with. He’s been banished to
a police backwater for insisting that a rich businessman had arranged his
wife’s murder. Five years later, he’s proved correct. The husband confesses
and is murdered soon afterward. Recalled to Auckland, Ihaka unearths more
killings and makes more enemies. A lively plot, a good variety of
characters, and Thomas doesn’t burden us with excessive stuff about the
detective’s ethnic or tribal